Category: Poetry

Signal to noise

by amurderofcrows, posted in Crows, Poetry

I’ve stopped feeding the crows.
They come by anyway,
asking when we are going for a car ride.

Even though they annoyed me with their incessant cawing,
and their disregard for seatbelt laws,
I liked their company anyway.
But they started pooping on the seats,
and playing with the radio, so I dropped them off
next to the donkey field.

….but that thing about voices,
do you really need me on camera?
Can’t you just imagine me,
mouth turned down like a peanut, beak journal bound,
pen clutched in my fat talon?

Where has our knowing gone?
Where is Vasalisa the Wise?
Her intuiting doll?
She’s the signal that leads you to Baba Yaga,
where more dark work needs to be done.

The apology

by amurderofcrows, posted in Poetry

“one thing I don’t need
is any more apologies
i got sorry greetin me at my front door
you can keep yrs
i don’t know what to do wit em
they don’t open doors
or bring the sun back
they don’t make me happy
or get a mornin paper
didn’t nobody stop usin my tears to wash cars
cuz a sorry.”
― Ntozake Shange, For colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf

Response

I apologize to the hounds every day
without saying a word
cuz even the devil thinks the sunny days are sad
I can make tails of it
when it greets me at the door
or morphs, or shapeshifts
but I don’t know what it thinks
or what it wants
I just know it has its own agenda
and it’s making people mad
and not in that good way when people are smokin’ reefer
and Monterey Pop is on
but in that way a child cowers in a corner
then lashes out like a lion

Love’s Conversation (an homage to “Part of Eve’s Discussion” by Marie Howe)

by amurderofcrows, posted in Poetry

It was like the second when your eyes meet, then you look away, and blush before blushes, the second the scent of skin seems to come over you because you move closer, but not close enough, like when a thousand butterflies land and come together before you get dizzy, and yes, swoon, very much like the time, walking arm in arm at night, when it occurs to you that you could actually faint, just before you faint, and the comets meet you at eye level, then rain down on you, and say it won’t last forever.

Like Neruda

by amurderofcrows, posted in Poetry

I can write the loneliest verses today.

Say, for example, “Alone is soft.”

Are we alone?

It doesn’t matter anymore, what’s below my feet.
The Scottish Play says “quiet.”

I didn’t have the heart to wake you.
It’s only a blanket.

Soft around the oils.
Breath falling.

Eyes close in blue ridges. Dreams come.
Never again. Sometimes.

Vines like a river

by amurderofcrows, posted in Poetry

Breeze through the glories
Vines like a river, like a wave
Painted gold, leaves shimmering

When my eyes told you I love you,
you tried to touch me with your tendrils.
Your dress, worn softly and falling apart,
revealed a mouse’s treasure beneath your blooms.
And purple trumpets, emerging from your shoulders,
announced the morning rain.

Noise

by amurderofcrows, posted in Poetry

Some people seemed to get all sunshine, and some all shadow…”
― Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

The cars are a river that wake with me
Silver and silent, going nowhere

The planes are up at 6 am, but their song isn’t pretty
Instead they sear the sky and hit the birds,
blood and feathers in the wings

The lights come on
but they aren’t the sun or the bright moon
They are green and harsh

Sometimes they are red
and pavlovian

The friend

by amurderofcrows, posted in Poetry

She is erased, but I still watch her
The drunk, there
Looks like no other
glassy, unseeing
peering out from the pain

ethanol sits there between us
waving like the summer heat
so there’s no embrace
only breath perception

you can’t, you aren’t
I am not
I am

the tears don’t come, and I’m more sad than angry
but I don’t miss her anymore

Why do we gaze at stars?

by amurderofcrows, posted in Poetry

For Lisa

Why do we gaze at stars?
Birds used to swim, before they could fly.
The longer we swim, the more likely we will grow wings.

The sailors, then, is that why they watch you?
Yes, otherwise they’ll never be free.

So, sailors are like fish caterpillars, waiting to emerge?
Yes, like an unborn star.

How are stars born?
Light, balance, and force.

Just those things?
Maybe some fairy dust.

What happens when you fall?
A million wishes are made.

Who do you fall for?
The purest of hearts.

Do their wishes come true?
Look for yourself.

Fire

by amurderofcrows, posted in Poetry

Fire
I dreamt last night I was a volcano,
but afraid of my own power
I erupted bitterness instead of fire

The neglected dog two doors down
is a different heat
and it burns my belly to imagine him there
under the hot light of a back porch

Night winds cool the winds of the day
that are harsher in their own way
the sun swept around in the branches
is mad there is no shadows
and basks the leaves in a blinding light

Untitled

by amurderofcrows, posted in Poetry

Return_To_Ether

“Ravens are the birds I’ll miss most when I die. If only the darkness into which we must look were composed of the black light of their limber intelligence. If only we did not have to die at all. Instead, become ravens.”

― Louise Erdrich, The Painted Drum

We’re always left to ponder,
where do birds go when they die?
Do they disintegrate in the air,
or return to the ground?

I held my last bird in my hands.
Willie.
As the vet injected him, I was able to pet his head for the first time,
and last.
I told him to say hello to the other birds when he gets there,
but it’s not heaven. Heaven doesn’t exist.
Ether does.
And the souls of all the little birds surround us, in the air beyond the clouds.

We’re always left to ponder,
where do the Ravens go when they die?
Do they, as the saying goes,
become part of the dark sky?
Are they shrouded by the ebony wings of their unkindred,
and die in secret?

Pigeon, I see your feathers on the ground.
Maybe just two with no body, perfectly staged like a killer’s art.
What did you take…
or what was taken from you?

We’re always left to ponder, how does the hummingbird die?
Tiny, fragile, in the cup of a hand,
or drowning in the nectar of a foxglove?